1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a device for containing, storing and combining concentrate with a dilutant such as water.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Each day tens of thousands of disposable applicator bottles are employed in home and industrial use for disinfectant, cleaning and the like. These applicator bottles typically incorporate sprays or squeeze release and are often to be employed for a single fill resulting in discard after consumption of a relatively small volume of mixed liquid, for instance on the order of 28 ounces. The process of filling, storage and shipping such containers is extremely labor intensive and expensive. As an example, disinfectants and cleaners are often premixed on an assembly line to fill bottles and package cartons of 36 or so to be carted to storage or shipped thus generating liquid of substantial bulk and weight. This can result in subjecting workers handling same to fatigue and injury from lifting and manipulating the heavy cartons about for transport and storage.
For single use bottles disposal can present a challenge and contributes significantly to the filling of landfills with plastics that resist degrading and decomposition. In some applications, as for instance, commercial and industrial settings, efforts have been made to reuse spray bottles and the like by refilling them with a mix of, for instance, disinfectant and water. Often times it is necessary to dedicate an employee to simply refilling the spray bottles with cleaning and disinfecting agents to ready the reconstituted liquid to perform its work. While helpful in reducing the magnitude of discarded bottles, these procedures may require that each day empty and partially empty bottles be collected at a central location for refilling. The refilled bottles must then be distributed to work sites thus taking a toll on the efficient operation of an institution. In some instances, the disinfecting agent may be toxic or harmful to the skin or eyes thus adding to the risk and inconvenience of refilling through a conventional bottle neck.
In some industrial settings, the bottles are used at various different locations such as dishwashing or laundry stations, food dispensing stations, paint or epoxy mixing stations and at a myriad of other stations. The operator thus has the option of either purchasing the disinfectant fluid in bottles already mixed or possibly purchasing the concentrate such as soaps, disinfectants, paint pigments, epoxies and the like separately and mixing or diluting or proportioning them on site. Thus, there exists the dilemma that mixing is either accomplished at the place of manufacturing to bottle the diluted liquid cleaner or disinfectant for shipment as relatively heavy bulky product or employing a dedicated station at the industrial facility for refilling and mixing, both of which are undesirable and unsatisfactory solutions.
Efforts have been made to overcome these shortcomings by providing a proportioning system for attachment to, for instance, separate bottles of concentrate and dilutant. A device of this type is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 6,036,057 to Poutiatine. While serving to provide a convenient means for drawing fluid from a pair of containers and proportionally mixing same, such a device is rather complicated, expensive to manufacture and can prove inconvenient and unreliable in use.
At present, there exists an opportunity to mix concentrate with a dilutant in an applicator container. It has been recognized that it would be convenient to marry a concentrate cartridge with a dilutant container to be portable as a unit such that the cartridge would be readily available for removal and mixing of concentrate and dilutant in the applicator container. A device of this type is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,925,066 to Rosenbaum. Such devices suffer the shortcoming that their use is still labor intensive in that the user, to employ the benefits of the device, is required to detach the concentrate container and manually pour the contents thereof into the applicator container, a time consuming, messy and in the case of toxic products a risky task.
Other efforts have led to the proposal of a concentrate cartridge disposed in the neck of a mixing container and openable by twisting the top of the mixing container to break a seal. A device of this type is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,836,479 to Klima. While helpful in minimizing the exposure to concentrate, such devices have limited usage in that the concentrate cartridge is of limited size and volume and typically of single use thus necessitating frequent replacement thereof and consequent inefficiencies of use and generation of waste in the used cartridges.